This invention relates to valuable cards, instruments and documents and, in particular to methods and apparatus for patterning or encoding these cards, instruments and documents.
For ease of discussion, the invention will be illustrated using cards such as commonly used plastic cards. However, it should be understood that the term “cards”, as used in the specification to follow and in the appended claims, includes instruments, labels, tags, and documents (e.g., passports) of all types, although not specifically identified as such.
Cards of interest may be used, for example, to identify a person or object and/or they may be used as a value card (i.e. a debit card or credit card) to withdraw money from a machine. Because of the value of these cards there are counterfeiters who make “false” cards which attempt to imitate “true” or “valid” cards. To enhance the security of the cards it is known to add additional security features to the surface of the cards. These added security features can take the form of holograms or spatially dependent optical images or ghost images strategically placed on the surface of the card.
In certain applications, the security features depend on a person actually checking that the cards' security features are present and/or intact. This is problematic since most persons responsible for checking the validity of the card, such as a cashier, do not actually look at the card and simply mechanically swipe the card through a card reader, such as a slot reader. When this occurs, the security features present on the card such as the hologram on the surface of the card and the signature on the back of the card are rendered useless.
It is therefore desirable and necessary to develop a more reliable and automatic means for impeding the falsification of a card by using card readers to check the validity of the cards. Thus, card readers, rather than humans, may be used to automatically read or sense the security related information contained on a card to identify whether a card is valid. Also, to increase the security of the cards more features may be added to make it more difficult to counterfeit these cards. Examples of means for enhancing the security of cards and for sensing (reading) the presence of the enhanced security means are described in Applicants' issued patents, identified below, the teachings of which are incorporated herein by reference: (a) Multi Sensor Information Reader, U.S. Pat. No. 6,616,043; (b) Method and Apparatus For Impeding The Counterfeiting Of Cards, Instruments and Documents, U.S. Pat. No. 6,068,301; and (c) Card With Enhanced Security Features, U.S. Pat. No. 7,407,101.
Although cards and card reader systems made in accordance with our previous inventions have significant advantages, there are instances when even greater or different types of secured cards and card reader systems are desirable.
Thus, it is desirable to have cards designed such that it is almost impossible to counterfeit the cards. It is also desirable to have cards designed with features that make it virtually impossible to extract information from the cards when an associated reader can not validate stored information or when the cards do not satisfy some predetermined criteria.